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Africa's backdoor for ivory

War-torn Angola is Africa’s major conduit for illegal ivory. A report released last week by the conservation organisation WWF and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, concludes that illegal ivory trading is growing rapidly.

Most of the merchandise is sold in Angola by dealers from neighbouring Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where poaching is rife. They exploit Angola – the only African country not to have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) – to sell their wares to lucrative markets in China, the US and Europe.

“In Luanda, we saw everything from small trinkets to whole raw tusks for sale, as well …